The Vegan Agenda: end the vegan tax, eat doughnuts, follow bugs, make perfect beans
Friends! Since we last emailed you, October became November and 2019 grew ominously close to being over even though it feels somehow both like it just started and like it’s lasted a 100000 days already.
At the beginning of this year, Tenderly didn’t even exist. Now your favorite friendly + radical veganzine is close to publishing our 300th article, and we’re read by tens-of-thousands of visitors every month. WOW! We’re super grateful to everyone reading this, all of our followers across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and, of course, Medium.
If you want to support what we do, you can share our stories and tell the vegans you know about what we’re all about. We want to build a real community of like-minded vegans, vegetarians, and future vegans ;) who are intellectually curious, radically compassionate, and ready to live + eat extremely well while working on a better world. Thank you for joining us!
Here are just some of the incredible things we’ve shared since our last letter.
THE BEST VEGAN DOUGHNUTS IN LOS ANGELES
“My doughnut-eating partner was a little startled when I kept exclaiming “is this seriously vegan?!” as I ate my banana fudge pastry. But all the labels indicated that it was indeed 100% plant-based, and I swear, it might be the best raised doughnut I’ve ever had. I would love to know how they accomplished it. It was so light and fluffy, with delicious frosting (I also had the raspberry one). SK’s Doughnuts is conveniently located around La Brea, and I’ll be coming back next time I need a spiritual experience for $2.50.”
STOP CALLING VEGAN FOOD “FAKE”
“‘Fake’ is often also used as a derogatory term, a way to belittle plant-based products as “less than.” The word conjures images of over-processed lumps of imitation food, an uncanny valley full of soy. When we say ‘fake’ elsewhere, we mean a tacky pretender: fake nails, fake blood, fake plastic trees, fake friends.”
WHAT ONE ROOSTER TAUGHT ME ABOUT ANTI-SPECIESISM
“Rather than being the aggressive, mean bird we were led to expect, Teddy was social, sweet, and quickly became attached to me and my roommates. He followed me from room to room and always wanted to be where we were. He would lay beneath my desk while I worked, and even followed me straight into the shower a few times.”
MY FILTHY CONFESSION: I PUT VEGENAISE ON EVERYTHING
“And then it was too late to go back. Each of us bathed our pasta in the unlawful condiment and mixed it in, at first tentatively, then with abandon. We raised our wine glasses and began to eat … and it was delicious. Breathtaking. Decadent. A revelation. It was the tastiest, strangest, most shameful but somehow voluptuous meal that I had ever had, and none of us ever spoke about it again.”
NEW VEGAN RECIPES
- Spaghetti frittata!
- Simple five-ingredient pea + garlic soup
- Chocolate cinnamon babka, for Jerry and Elaine
- Chicago-style veggie hot dogs
- Instant pot lasagna from Nisha Vora
- Old-fashioned cheesecake, made with Aquafaba
- Two ways to make vegan dulce de leche
- Bundevera, a pumpkin dessert from Serbia
- The secret to creamy coconut milk ice cream
- The perfect pot of beans
THE ART INSTALLATION THAT CHANGED MY PERCEPTION OF ANIMALS FOREVER
“I deduced, from watching it, that I couldn’t possibly keep eating creatures whose existence was so much like my own but on a different frequency. It was like discovering the existence of alien life on a passing radio wave — something that finally breaks through the static just when you’re listening for it.”
ONE DOG’S JOURNEY OUT OF THE CHINESE MEAT TRADE
“It was instant love. And now they are totally thriving. They are so beautiful and happy, and they go on hikes and they are by the water, in the grass, in the field. It’s such a happy ending.”
THE FIGHT FOR A TRULY ETHICAL VEGAN FUTURE
“I start[ed] researching more about plant-based diets, beyond just as a nutritional thing, at the same time that I’m interested in Black feminism and understanding the consequences of systemic racism on Black people. I got interested in how this whole system of oppression goes beyond race and gender. The United States is kind of ecocidal. They’ve normalized the oppression and the consumption of animals.”
“THE VEGETARIAN COMPASS” IS A TIMELESS COOKBOOK
“‘People become vegetarians for spiritual, nutritional, political, and ecological reasons,’ writes chef Karen Hubert Allison in the introduction to her 1998 cookbook The Vegetarian Compass. ‘Whether we are saving our bodies, our planet, or our place in heaven we are putting more vegetables on our plates than ever before.’”
THIS CAT SANCTUARY IN HAWAII IS A SOUTH PACIFIC PURR-ADISE
“Cats need an environment that creates happiness and that includes tall places, open spaces, hiding nooks and shelter from the elements. We designed the sanctuary to replicate the area the cats came from to make it a more comfortable environment, like growing tall native grass to allow them to hide. We wanted to create a playground so appealing that guests will happily roll in the grass with the cats.”
IT’S TIME TO END THE VEGAN TAX
“ When we see restaurants willingly changing their menus to accommodate some causes, but not vegan ones, it’s easy to think they simply don’t care about the harm dairy does to human bodies, animals’ welfare, and the environment. But it’s more likely that they simply don’t see a reason to stop charging extra since no one is really complaining about it. If it doesn’t seem to be broken, why fix it?”
HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD WITH VEGAN ICE CREAM
“We felt alone in navigating some of the curve balls of business. When the Milk and Dairy board informed us that our vegan business would be paying a fee as well as being inspected monthly, I was befuddled. When we finally perfected our dream ingredients for our ideal ice cream, the distributor list was 15 suppliers long! How would I streamline this? We needed people to work the shop — but we needed the right people. How do I create a company with a culture, and not just a couple of jobs for people to scoop ice cream part time?”
I FOLLOWED A BUG FOR A DAY
“I decided that the perfect form of a bug is something that is black or brown, that has a reasonable number of legs somewhere in between the embarrassingly low number that people have and the obscene number that spiders have, and that spends the day kind of obliviously wandering around. But then I realized that this could literally describe my cat Midshipman Jenkins and that I would need to come up with a vastly better definition if I wanted this to work.”
And with that, for now, we’re out.
XO,
Tenderly
